Travel Journal

Hey Mr. Umpire Part #2

(Monday 6 October 2014) by Rick Clot

Last week I posted a few notes on my experiences umpping young adult park district softball games and how everyone thinks they know the rules but, in reality, it's always the one who yells the loudest who knows the least. Example: In yesterday's coed game a player disagreed with an out call I made at first base arguing that the first baseman had the ball trapped on the ground rather than having possession of the ball off the ground. He may have been right but my call stood. After all, it's the umpire's job to get as many outs as possible. Then an inning later a runner on third tagged and scored on a long FOUL fly to left and the same guy argued that the runner was not allowed to tag on a foul ball. He seemed to know the trap rule at first pretty well but not the foul ball rule. That happens a lot. Then last Thursday there was another incident that still bothers me four days later. First of all, there are two things that are important to know here. 1) All batters start with a 1-1 count and, 2) Nobody likes to take a walk. Everybody wants to hit. Situation: a batter takes the first two pitches outside for balls making the count 3-1. The next pitch hits the plate for strike two. Full count. The next pitch was clearly inside and since no one likes to walk most guys will swing weakly at the pitch in hopes of getting a better pitch to swing at. Obviously that happens when they only have one strike. This guy had two strikes and must have lost track of the count so when he swung and missed it was strike three. Then he started arguing with me from the bench. I think he was embarrassed that he struck out and he was trying to push the blame off on me to make himself look better in front of his teammates. What a jackwagon! How different this is from senior softball. These young guys all try to out macho each other.